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OPINION

Moore | The sins of white supremacy

In his letter from a Birmingham jail Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”(Photo: Charles Harrity, AP)

One of my earliest memories is of a substitute Sunday school teacher chastening me for putting a coin in my mouth. "That’s filthy," she said. "Why, you don’t know if a colored man might have held that."

It might just be my imagination playing tricks on me, but it seems as though she immediately followed this up with, "All right children, let’s sing 'Jesus Loves the Little Children, All the Children of the World.'"

Now, this lady probably didn’t consciously think of herself as a white supremacist. She almost certainly didn’t think of herself as subversive to the gospel itself.

She probably never thought about the hypocrisy of holding these two contradictory worldviews together in her mind. And I’m sure she didn’t see how her dehumanizing of African-Americans was a twisted form of Darwinism rather than biblical Christianity.

She wasn’t alone.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was the most iconic figure of the civil rights movement. His leadership and justice ministry changed the course of history. With prophetic courage, he spoke to a watching world about a Christian vision of equality, justice, and human dignity.

In his speeches and sermons, as he sounded forth the call for equality and justice, he shaped the consciences of people across the nation -- including those of men and women who attended churches just like mine.

Dr. King’s understanding of human dignity was founded upon the Christian Scriptures. As the struggle for civil rights advanced on multiple fronts, he spoke courageously from this foundation.

In the political realm, Dr. King pointed out how the American system was inconsistent with Jeffersonian principles of the "self-evident" truth that "all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights."

Americans had to choose: be an American (as defined in the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence), or be a white supremacist; you can’t be both.

But the Civil Rights Movement was, at its core, also an ecclesial movement. King was, after all, Rev. King, and many of those marching with him, singing before him, listening to him, were Christian clergy and laity.

To the churches, especially the churches of the South, Dr. King and the civil rights pioneers sent a similar message to the one they sent to the governmental powers. You have to choose: be a Christian (as defined by the Scripture and the small "c" catholic apostolic tradition), or be a white supremacist; you can’t be both.

Beyond his natural strengths as an orator, a great deal of the power behind King’s message came from the way that he was pressing a claim onto consciences.

His words echoed the prophetic, sin-and-judgment language that we see in the Old Testament. His words were intentionally resonant with the cadence of the King James Bible because he was speaking a word of judgment to a Bible Belt who knew that Bible. He wanted to confront consciences with what they said they believed.

But he didn’t simply preach judgment. He knew that his argument wouldn’t resonate with Christian consciences unless it appealed to their Christ-haunted imagination. That’s why so much of his language evoked a distinctly biblical view of justice.

Because of the work of Dr. King and the courageous men and women who fought tirelessly alongside of him, segregation, like slavery, was ultimately shown to be what all human consciences already knew it to be: not just a political injustice or a social inequity (although certainly that) but also a sin against God and neighbor, and a repudiation of the gospel.

Conservative Christians must be careful to remember the ways in which our cultural anthropology perverted our soteriology and ecclesiology. It is to our shame that we ignored our own doctrines to advance something as clearly demonic as racial pride.

So, regardless of our backgrounds, it is appropriate that we pause and consider not only Dr. King’s life and legacy, but also our own past and future. As we do so, we are reminding ourselves of how far we have to go as Americans to see the promise of racial justice realized.

We are reminding ourselves of how far we have to go as Christians to see gospel unity in our own congregations. And we are reminding ourselves that there’s a reason King’s words haunt us more than 50 years later; in our gospel preaching, in our efforts to esteem the dignity of all humanity, we still have something to learn from Dr. King.

Russell Moore is president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention in Nashville. The ERLC is co-hosting a gathering of evangelical Christians to reflect on the legacy of MLK in Memphis, April 3-4. Visit mlkconference.com for complete details.